So, what exactly happened to Akiba?
After the Islander Royale, he returned home, with nothing but a trophy and a sun tan. He walked back into their apartment, and his mother was there to greet him with a smile, "Akiba! Congratulations, I'm so proud of you!" She cheered, ruffling his hair. He whined playfully and ducked away, "It was nothing, mom!" He defended, "I didn't even do anything!"
She smiled even harder at that, "You're so humble!"
He grumbled, "Yeah, yeah, where's Sakura?"
His mother stiffened at his words, "She's helping the local hospital with a fundraiser."
"Oh." He fixed his gaze down at the floor.
His mother carded her fingers through his hair, "Oh, honey, don't be like that. She's really very sorry."
He brushed her off, "I'm not upset." He half-heartedly protested before trudging to his room, leaving his trophy forgotten on the table.
He lay down on his bed, with half a mind to go to sleep. Just as he was about to fall asleep, the phone started ringing and he sleepily fumbled it open, "H-hello?"
The voice on the other side chirped, "Hello! Is this Akiba Gorudo of the Beigoma Academy bey club?"
Akiba rubbed at his eyes, "Well, yeah, I guess. Who're you?"
The voice chirped back, "Well you see, I was hoping you'd be willing to be a beyblade instructor for my son!"
Akiba yawned, "Sorry, sir, but I'm kinda on a low budget right now..."
"Oh not to worry!" The voice reassured, "I'll make sure you're well compensated. Let's see... How about a thousand yen per hour?"
That number pulled him out of his stupor, "NANI?! 1000 yen? Oh, wow."
"So do we have a deal?"
"Yes. Absolutely. A deal." He promised, and with that, the man hung up. Akiba collapsed on the bed and laughed hysterically, "I could start a career from this!"
Daigo groaned as he cracked his neck as he walked off the plane, "I really don't have the budget to travel so much."
Boa bounded up behind him, smoothing out his poncho, "We're kids! We really shouldn't be expected to be this responsible."
Daigo shrugged, "That's just how this works."
They made their way through security and exited the airport and stepped out into the bustling streets of Tokyo. Boa looked around appraisingly, "Woah, this place is so bright. It's like it's day time!"
Daigo grabbed his collar to stop him from straying away, "Never been to Tokyo?" He asked.
Boa shook his head, "I think Felicity did, once, but that was for an exhibition match."
"Yeah well, I don't go around much either, nowadays." He confessed.
Boa looked at him oddly, "Why? What happened?"
Daigo shrugged, "Well, you know, Ryota got hospitalised, and then I joined AS Gallus, and well, things didn't work out..."
Boa nodded, "Yeah... I get that. So, why is this Akiba guy here anyways?"
Daigo shrugged, "Akiba moved away last month. Something about starting to tutor kids in beyblade? I don't know, he wasn't exactly clear."
Boa blinked, "Why would you pay a guy your age to explain to you how to beyblade?"
Daigo shrugged again, "I dunno, but apparently it's a good market. He's got a studio and everything."
"Is that legal?" Boa asked
Daigo looked at him, "Owning a studio? I don't think so."
Boa rolled his eyes, "No! I meant is it legal for a teenager to just... Drop out of school and start teaching kids how to beyblade in a studio?"
Boa blinked, "Huh, I never thought of it." After a couple seconds of thinking, he decided, "Well, no one's made him stop yet, and it's been nearly two months, so...?"
Boa shot him a look, "Two months?! I thought you said one month!"
"One month since he moved." Daigo explained, "Two months since he dropped out."
"That just makes it worse!" Boa protested, about to rant some more,
"Oh look, we're here." Daigo cut him off, taking a sharp turn into a building.
Boa yelped and scrambled to follow him. They went up the elevator to the sixth floor, then took a right. They stopped outside a studio with a poster of a stylised beyblade and some kanji written on it. "What's it say?" Boa asked
"Gorudo Akiba's Beyblade training Class." Daigo explained, knocking on the door.
It was immediately opened by the blue haired boy, his exposed eye grinning in recognition, "Hey, Daigo! Fancy seeing you here! Who's this?"
Daigo motioned towards Boa, "This is Boa Alcazaba. He needs your help."
Akiba quirked a brow and moved aside, "Sounds like a long story. Come inside, will you?"
The two stepped inside some sort of reception area, which seemed more like a sitting room with the addition of a desk and small filling cabinet. Daigo took a couple seconds to take in Akiba, with how much he had changed during his absence. He had started wearing cuffed jeans, and had on a T-shirt with the astrology wheel on it. Other than that, it was the same gold eye, and the same teal marking. Once they were seated, Akiba grinned, "Alright. So what happened?"
Boa paused in thought, before finally speaking, "You can speak to Beys, right?"
Akiba nodded, "That's right. But I don't publicly advertise that."
Boa rubbed the back of his neck, "So how much do you know about resonance?"
Akiba shrugged, "About as much as anyone does. Probably more than that."
Daigo let out a slow breath, and pulled out a small velveteen box out of his jacket. Akiba smirked, raising an eyebrow, "What, are you planning on proposing?"
Daigo scowled as he slid it across the coffee table, "Shut up and take a look at it for us."
Akiba snickered, but pulled it open, whistling in surprise when he saw the bey lying inside. "This is a good bey. Never seen anything like it. Where did you get it?"
Boa sighed, "That is Legend Spryzen. A snake bey."
Akiba blinked, "What's a snake bey?"
Boa gestured wildly, "A snake bey is a beyblade made by the Snakepit, with a specialised method. They tend to be different from other beys, even handcrafted ones."
Akiba nodded, fingers lightly grazing over the bey, "I see what you mean. It feels almost toxic to me."
Boa bit his lip anxiously, "Can you talk to it, though?"
Akiba pulled out a pile of well-worn cards, "Well, I can give it my best shot. My normal approach doesn't seem to be working, but it's not the first time a bey has been uncooperative."
Boa blinked, "What's with the cards?"
Akiba shuffled the pack busily, "I was taught how to use them by my aunt. The cards are kinda like a medium."
Daigo snapped his fingers, "So you can't tell the future! I knew it."
Akiba shrugged, getting apologetically as he spread the deck in an arc, "Yeah, it just gives me vital information of my opponent's strategy. Which is practically reading your mind."
"No, it's not the same thing! A semi inanimate object told you." Daigo huffed.
Akiba waved him off, dismissively, "Yeah well... You need my help, don't you? Now quiet, I'm starting."
He started murmuring in a foreign language, hands hovering over the arc of cards.
"This feels like a seance." Boa commented offhandedly. Akiba shot him a glare, and Boa immediately mimed zipping his lips. Akiba closed his eyes again and pulled out a card from the arc, laying it face down, before deftly pulling out five more from different places in the pack. He stacked the six blindly in a neat pile, and repeating the process again and again until he had thirteen small piles. He opened his eyes wide, scanning each pile intently, before glancing at the bey and grabbing the third pile of cards. He shuffled through them without looking at them, before adding in a blank card, then he placed them back on the hardwood table. He glanced at the other two boys apprehensively, before flipping the topmost card over, revealing a picture of an Energy Layer, "Ares. Destruction." He interpreted, before flipping over another one, "Vesuvius. Wrath." Another card. Another Energy Layer, "Syren. Seduction." He deftly flipped over another one, "Featis. The guardian of the future." Another card was added to the row, "Fafnir, evolution template; Drain. A parasite." There were only two left. He picked up the next one, "Jormunter. The great snake." He proclaimed, before turning to the last one. The blank one. He lifted it up, looked at it, then held up the card for everyone to see. What was formerly blank had just traces of red ink on it, seeming to form words too faint to read.
Boa leaned forward, "How are you planning on reading that?"
Akiba continued staring at the cards, but answered him absent mindedly, "You guys won't be able to see it properly. But I can read it easily. The blank cards are coated with a special type of ink that allows bey avatars to affect it as a mode of easy communication."
Boa nodded, "So what's it say?"
Akiba shrugged, "It says that it has been created to control Shu Kurenai."
Boa blinked, "That's surprisingly direct for an uncooperative spinning top."
Akiba shrugged, "It's not exactly telling me this on its own volition."
Daigo shook his head, "Yeah, well, except for that little tidbit, what else could you figure out from that card trick?"
Akiba hummed, inspecting the six cards, "I can gather that it was designed to channel anger. It feeds off of the blader's anger. And it seems to be... A stepping stone?— Yeah let's go with that— A stepping stone to something greater. Something awful."
Boa and Daigo exchanged glances as Boa gulped anxiously. "So can you help us?" Daigo asked.
Akiba raised an eyebrow, "Help you how? You've still got to tell me what this is about."
Boa sighed loudly and stood up, "Alright. But buckle up, because it's a long story."
Akiba blinked as Boa pointed to nowhere in particular, "It all started when my dumbass friend Felicity Comas decided that she needed more resources and better training facilities. Her stupidly high expectations led her to a place in Mexico called the Snakepit, famed for it's ridiculously unethical practices, which is stupid because why the hell would you risk jail time for Beyblade?! It can't have that much to gain. But I'm getting off track. They used her as a guinea pig for their experiments, and when one went wrong, it gave her the ability to talk to Beys and fire bend. But it left her traumatized so she ran away and started traveling the world, becoming friends with Shu Kurenai. Said friend was also a dumbass, maybe a bigger dumbass than Felicity, because even though she told him to stay away from the Snakepit, he went anyways! And now he's been possessed by a beyblade demon." He took a deep breath before starting again, waving his hands, "So being the good friend she is, she made a deal with a madman and had him free Shu in exchange for her –which was an awful decision to be honest, we don't need to be fighting her right now, she's a bigger problem than Crazy Eye– but now we have to deal with this idiot screaming and trying to murder us, and this ridiculous bey is the cause of Shu's insanity, and we need you to fix it. Do you follow?"
Akiba stared at him blankly, "You're gonna have to run that by me again. Slowly this time. But what I could tell was that Shu has been brainwashed by this Snakepit using this bey as a conduit. And you need my help to undo it."
Daigo nodded, "Yeah, that was the important part."
Akiba tapped his chin, "Why not just destroy it?"
Boa shook his head, "What if we need to do something else with the bey? Then if we destroy it, we can't do anything else!"
Akiba sighed, and got to his feet, "I don't know what to tell you guys. I'll need to see him to assess the situation, but I need to stay here in Tokyo for my tutoring job. I can't help you."
Daigo didn't flinch, "What if we bring him here instead?"
Akiba shrugged, "I have no problem with that."
Boa groaned, "Oh great."
